First lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday made a rare foray into a Capitol Hill dispute, using a White House event to rally support for school meal nutrition rules that Republicans are pushing to loosen.

The first lady successfully lobbied for those standards in 2010, and has since become the public face of this and other initiatives aimed at improving the dietary habits of children.

But some schools have complained the rules are too restrictive and costly – and House Republicans have a new bill aimed at addressing those concerns. An agriculture spending bill approved by a House subcommittee last week would allow schools to waive the standards if they have a net loss on school food programs for a six-month period.

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Seeing her nutritional standards under threat, the first lady hosted a discussion with school leaders on Tuesday afternoon at the White House where she ripped efforts to roll back those guidelines.

“This is unacceptable,” Obama said.

The first lady said families realize the country is facing a “health crisis,” and the “last thing we can afford to do right now is play politics with kids’ health.”

While there’s no doubt that Barack and Michelle Obama would love to do away with this whole democracy thing and just be crowned King and Queen of America, perhaps they should be reminded that we don’t have a monarchy here. Michelle Obama especially needs to remember that she’s the First Lady — a mostly meaningless, symbolic position that has absolutely no authority over our national politics. She’s a greedy power-grabber, that we knew, but in this case, she’s just going to have to get over it.